Subject: Cambridge Gets Rights to Patent For AIDS Protein
Date: Published: 2/18/88 67 lines
Source:  WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

   Cambridge Gets
   Rights to Patent
   For AIDS Protein
    ---
   By David Stipp
   Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

   WORCESTER, Mass. -- Cambridge Bioscience Corp. said
Harvard University assigned it exclusive world-wide rights to
a U. S. patent the school was granted on a protein used in
AIDS diagnostics and experimental AIDS vaccines.
   The biotechnology concern, which will pay royalties to
Harvard, said it plans to sublicense the protein to other
concerns that use it in AIDS-related products.
   A company spokesman said the patent covers both an
acquired immune deficiency syndrome viral protein called
gp120 and related proteins that react with it.  He added,
however, that the full scope of the patent and the companies
and researchers that may be affected by it "are not yet
clear."
   Analysts said the patent, which was granted yesterday to
Harvard, may be a particularly important one because the
protein is widely used in AIDS diagnostics and in AIDS
vaccine research.  Cambridge Bioscience, for example, is
developing a five-minute AIDS diagnostic test based on the
protein.
   A team led by Myron Essex, a researcher at the Harvard
School of Public Health earlier identified the protein, which
is on the outer coat of the AIDS virus, as one that reacts
strongly with antibodies to the AIDS virus in the blood of
people infected with the disease.  That makes gp120
particularly useful in AIDS diagnostic tests, which detect
antibodies to the virus produced by infected persons' immune
systems.
   Researchers also hope that gp120, perhaps in combination
with related AIDS proteins, can be used as vaccines to induce
the immune system to produce antibodies that will protect
people from becoming infected with the virus.
   Cambridge Bioscience's AIDS research program has drawn
upon the work of several prominent AIDS researchers at
Harvard.  Dr. Essex is a member of the company's scientific
advisory board.  In September, the company joined Harvard
scientist William Haseltine and Agouron Pharmaceuticals Inc. 
of La Jolla, Calif., in a federally funded project to
research new drugs to fight the AIDS virus.
   A spokesman for Cambridge Bioscience declined to disclose
details of its licensing agreement with Harvard.
   Companies selling AIDS diagnostics and developing AIDS
vaccines declined to comment on the effect of the gp120
patent pending review of it.  However, a spokesman for Du Pont
Co. said that company uses the gp120 protein in one of its
AIDS diagnostic tests.  An Abbott Laboratories spokesman said
Abbott sells a diagnostic test for AIDS that is based on the
whole AIDS virus, rather than just part of it.  A spokesman
for Bristol-Myers Co. said that Bristol's Seattle-based
Oncogen unit is developing an AIDS vaccine using genetic
material related to gp120.

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